Madame Roland

Madame Roland (17 March 1754-8 November 1793), born Marie-Jeanne Philippon, was a leader of the Girondins during the French Revolution and the wife of Louis XVI of France's interior minister Jean-Marie Roland de la Platiere.

Biography
Marie-Jeanne Philippon was born in Paris, France on 17 March 1754, and she studied literature, music, and drawing while she was young. She became an educated person through reading the works of several Enlightenment thinkers, and she married philosopher Jean-Marie Roland de la Platiere in 1780. The two of them lived in Lyon during the 1780s, and they became liberal philosophers during the French Revolution; in 1791, the two moved to Paris after Monsieur Roland was elected to the National Convention as a member of the Girondins. Initially working as her husband's secretary, Madame Roland became a writer and salon owner, and she opposed the Jacobin Club due to its radicalism. In 1793, she was arrested by the Committee of Public Safety for her political activism and guillotined on 8 November 1793; her husband killed himself a few days later.